OK; you may be thinking about a automobile or some other piece of machinery, but in reality I'm speaking of your mind. The old think tank, you hat support, noggin. If you're never been in a situation to where you fear for you life or the lives of loved ones, then you don't really know how you will react to it. Most freeze up and can't function. Don't be that guy or gal, tune your mind and train it to react to different situations and dangers. You don't have to be in a life and death situation to train your mind to act in a controlled manner. You, your spouse and kids can help with this. Each can come up with a scenario and all think through it and come up with a plan that will keep everyone alive. There are card games that help with this called Conflicted. Survival scenarios that you, you family or team can review time and time again to train your mind in how to handle any type of scenario that may arise. This is good training for the mind.

At home or at your base camp, stay a step ahead of your foe, make track paths so you can tell if anyone's is checking you out. Look for make shift hides, where they stayed to watch you and your camp to gather intel. Track paths also tell you of any activity of others passing through around you. So getting your mind in the right frame of thinking is a good start. keeping your guard up doesn't mean someone's out to get you, but it also doesn't mean they're not. Just remember: you're trying to survive the bad part of the event and make it through to the rebuilding and restructuring part of our lives.

Check out the book, The Gift Of Fear by Gavin de Becker -a book written about how we can use intuition knowingly by recognizing gut feelings, body language, and instinctual behavior in predators who mean to do harm.

Good training if you can get your crew to take it seriously. Those who have never spent much time alone and reliant on themselves, seen to have the greatest difficulty really paying attention to their surroundings.

I find it natural in the woods or at camp, but urban settings are an effort for me. Swamp

People rarely notice what it right in front of their eyes. The Da Vinci Code

Swamp: I must agree, I too find it harder here in the suburbs, being it day in and day out. One gets accustom to the things around them and pay less attention to them. I try to take a day a week to either drive, walk or by bus to take note of things around me, but I must confess, that I may only do that once a month as an effort in like that of the gray man, Know my surroundings.

But then I'm in the wilderness or just camping, I take it all in, or at least try. This was something drilled into us in our jungle training and had be come second nature to us. For the longest time, it was as a part of me as breathing, but now some 50 years later, not so much. But I am rekindling that awareness and teaching my like minded friends and family the same.